Karen Wolfe is baffled: why did Betsy DeVos just give $12.6 million to Rocketship charter chain, which has a dismal record? Rocketship puts poor kids in front of computers and employs teacher aides to save money.
“Silicon Valley-based Rocketship is a charter school chain with a bevy of star backers that’s reported sky-high student achievement and recently landed a $12.6 million grant from Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education. But beyond the hype is a galaxy of problems, including plummeting test scores, litigation and allegations of student mistreatment.
Co-founded by the brain behind Yahoo’s first advertising platform, John Danner and Teach For America alum, Preston Smith, Rocketship has attracted the support of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists whose fortunes were made disrupting industries with tech: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and early Apple investor Arthur Rock, among others.
“Rocketship has grown over the last decade into a network of thirteen schools around the country, serving nearly 8,000 kindergarten through fifth-grade students who are overwhelmingly poor and Latino. The venture proclaims it is “dedicated to eliminating the achievement gap” with a business model which, Education Week explains, “replace[s] one credentialed teacher per grade with software and an hourly-wage aide, freeing up $500,000 yearly per school.”
“Rocketship’s initial results were promising. But the charter chain’s sky-high student outcomes have not held up: A 2014 analysis by the California Department of Education found that in the previous five years the number of Rocketship students scoring at the “proficient” level or above on California state tests fell by 30 percentage points in English and 14 percentage points in math…
“For years education activists and district officials have been raising alarms about Rocketship’s negative effect on student well-being. Students just five to ten years old sit in front of computers for 80 to100 minutes per day. The schools track, to the minute, the time that each elementary school child spends online, and their percentage of “goals” reached. That screen time is so valued by Rocketship that there’s almost no time for art or play. Students are even discouraged from taking bathroom breaks. One former teacher told NPR, “I’ve never had second-graders pee their pants except for at Rocketship.”
“A family physician in Santa Clara County with patients in Rocketship schools wrote the school board a letter noting a pattern of urinary tract infections and extreme stress.
“Parents and former employees have also raised concerns about safety due to a student to teacher ratio around thirty-seven to one, and about the school’s extreme no-talking policy called “Zone Zero” they claim “amounted to hours of enforced silence.”
Why? Replicating failing charters is not good for children, but it helps advance the DeVos agenda of privatization and union-busting.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
With all we know about DeVos, we seriously have to ask why at this point?
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Would these billionaires enroll their own kids in Rocketship? I think that is the crux of the issue.
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Wdf1, that is an excellent point. Here in California, it is well known that the tech elites do not allow their own children to sit in front of computers the way they demand consumers of their own products do. This article about Bill Gates’ and Steve Jobs’ kids came out the day The Progressive posted my piece on Rocketship. http://www.businessinsider.com/screen-time-limits-bill-gates-steve-jobs-red-flag-2017-10
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I think we have to recognize that Corporate Feudalism is a distinct form of government that is currently engaged in destroying every sector of the Representative Democracy we like to assume may still survive.
But Corporatism plays by its own rules, and could not care less about the rules of democratic policy making and execution. People keep being confused about that. And they keep asking why when the answer should be obvious.
The corporate pyramid schemers are not playing on the side of democracy and they never will.
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I love all the space references
Rocketship
Star backers
Sky high student achievement
Galaxy of problems
Plummeting test scores
Infections of Uranus
But, what, no reference to “crash and burn”?
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Grabitational Singularity —
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With apologies to Elton John
Charters ain’t the kind of place to school your kids
In fact, they’re cold as hell
And there’s no one there to school them, if you did
And all this silence, I don’t understand
It’s just their job five days a week
The Rocketmen, the Rocketmen
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And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Til touch down brings them round again to find…
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And I think it’s going to be a long, long time,
‘Til kids recover from the daily grind.
These ain’t like schools that they attend back home,
Oh no no no.
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Coming from you, SomeDAM Poet, that means a lot!
Tom Lehrer beat us all. This realy deserves its own post:
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department” say Wernher von Braun
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
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Karen, That is a wonderful addition to SomeDAM Poet–out of the past, Tom Lehrer.
Rocketship is a perfected venue for government subsidies to flow into the tech industry, especially for low-cost field testing–new software, apps, hardware–and gathering “big data” for in-house use and for sale to anyone who will pay for it.
The whole franchise functions as a “replicable and branded model” not much different from any other retail operation. The cover story is “education” but this is all strictly business. It there was no mandate for some documentation of student learning and the performance of the schools (units in the franchise), we could be talking about the scaling up and replicating of any franchise. Of course, this is exactly how many of the billionaires who are funding this franchise have made money and think of education.
Bill Gates recently spoke about the forthcoming investments of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.A big chunk of money will go to charters and replicating several “network models of education.” These networks impose extreme standardization on participants–nothing new–except that the networks are designed to preempt any public decision making, least of all by elected school boards. A network can be formed when Superintendents sign an MOU with the Gates Foundation on what the wants them to do, how, when, and the rest.
A ” LIFT network” in Tennessee has urban and rural districts free of any geographic or logical connection other than a narrowly defined curriculum focus (early literacy, Common Core) and stipulations about who will mange the training of teachers to implement it (in this case, TFA, Student Achievement Partners). Gates intends to capture Superintendents willing to sign these MOUs, one signature is all that is needed to get a whole district to jump through hoops in exchange for the bait of money from the Gates’ Foundation. This strategy is a lot easier than trying to get mayoral control of education, a second strategy, or MOUs with a school board for charter expansion, another strategy in Bill Gates effort to be king of education here in the USA and internationally.
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Because ed reform is relentlessly marketing “blended learning” and hope to jam it into every public school in the country ?
Go look at the US Department of Ed “ed tech” site- it’s basically federally funded advertising for ed tech product.
“This year, more than 130 schools in more than 27 states are using Summit, including nine schools in Kentucky and three in central and northern Ohio.
Summit uses what’s called blended learning, in which students spend part of the day on a computer learning on their own, and part of the day in a more traditional classroom setting, often doing projects. Students have individual online profiles, where they, their parents and their teachers can track academic progress.”
Some of the public school parents are upset that a California charter chain and Facebook are now running their public school, but as usual in ed reform, they were rolled over and completely ignored.
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/03/06/facebook-program-school-causes-controversy/97711414/
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I guess you will not report on the role of Clinton and the DNC in recent discoveries about t”the” report??
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Of course the Dems paid for opposition Report on Trump. Every politician does. Why are you surprised?
The guy who wrote is, Christopher Steele, is a British agent often used by the CIA.
Tthe question about the report is not who paid for Steele’s expertise but how much of that Report is accurate.
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Huh? Are you sure you understand what this conversation is about?
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I’m sure they do, but they’re just trying to hijack the thread to post their own off-topic propaganda.
Maybe they should start their own blog.
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And that relates to this, how?
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“replace[s] one credentialed teacher per grade with software and an hourly-wage aide, freeing up $500,000 yearly per school.”
I love the language. Replacing teachers with hourly wage aides is now “freeing up” funding- where does the money they saved on teachers go? To build more Rocketship franchises?
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Well, duh, the money goes to hedge funds, private equity firms, investors in so-called “social impact bonds,” companies that manage charter schools and the real estate involved, and anyone else making money on the backs of the kids.
As we all knew.
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Nobody is surprised by DeVos’ decision, including California parents. The purpose of my post is to show what a clear reflection of DeVos’ agenda the grant is–to show that to the many Progressive readers who are not as well versed in the subject as you and I are.
The money Rocketship appears to go to Silicon Valley, according one of the sources quoted in the article.
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Will Lakeside School implement Rocketship to save on faculty salaries?
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When Jeb Bush first started promoting using computer programs to replace teachers he said it would cut costs.
Then they realized that wouldn’t be attractive to parents, so they dropped that part of the pitch and replaced with “personalized”.
Amusing to watch the slogans evolve. This isn’t science. It’s marketing.
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Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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“For years education activists and district officials have been raising alarms about Rocketship’s negative effect on student well-being. Students just five to ten years old sit in front of computers for 80 to100 minutes per day. The schools track, to the minute, the time that each elementary school child spends online, and their percentage of “goals” reached. That screen time is so valued by Rocketship that there’s almost no time for art or play. Students are even discouraged from taking bathroom breaks
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Of course, charter schools aren’t a big enough market. The real goal is to jam it into every public school:
“In Disrupting Class, the authors project that by 2019, 50 percent of all high school courses will be delivered online. This pattern of growth is characteristic of a disruptive innovation—an innovation that transforms a sector characterized by products or services that are complicated, expensive, inaccessible, and centralized into one with products or services that are simple, affordable, accessible, convenient, and often customizable. Think personal computers, the iPod and mp3s, Southwest Airlines, and TurboTax. At the beginning of any disruptive innovation, the new technology takes root in areas of nonconsumption—where the alternative is nothing at all, so the simple, new innovation is infinitely better. More users adopt it as the disruptive innovation predictably improves.”
Has anyone asked high school students if they want 50% of their classes to be online? Would the adults who are pushing this like to spend 50% of their time alone watching instructors on a screen?
I’ll make a deal with ed reformers. When fancy private schools replace teachers with screens they can test this at my son’s school. Until then, no deal. Arne Duncan’s and Bill Gates’ children can go first.
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Because she can.
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Republicans policies have always exacerbated the Race and Class divide in the country to their gain.
Rich and powerful Democrats understand that “their people” sympathize with the poor and people of color, but really don’t want their own kids getting what they prescribe to others.
When push comes to shove, that’s the bottom line and it reveals an ugly selfishness that needs to be called out. One would hope that shame works better on Democrats than Republicans–but it doesn’t seem to work in regard to many Democrats’ support of Republican education policy.
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We’re working on that, Geronimo! We’re already seeing the results of that shame in the primary race for California Governor. The frontrunner Newsom was on the defensive last week because the money to launch his bid came from big charter money. He stumbled all over himself to convince teachers that that wouldn’t corrupt him. I think he fooled them.
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Then we have Villaraigosa, a supposed “man of the people” who thinks teacher tenure is a bad idea and wants more “choice.” Delaine Eastin is looking better all the time.
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John Chiang is the only candidate with a track record of pushing charter schools to be more transparent and accountable to the people. He pushed hard to get AB 709 passed, and when Jerry Brown vetoed it, Chiang, as treasurer, passed regulations so that at least charters applying for bond funds would have to comply with our open meeting and public records laws.
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So CTA thinks that Newsom can be financed by big charter money and still support teachers and CTA?
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Apparently so. I think they’re betting that he is going to win, and they’re in the “anyone but Villaraigosa” state of mind. I think they’re wrong; it’s very early and CTA dismissed the value of its own endorsement, which could impact the outcome.
Among the donors who launched Newsom’s gubernatorial bid are the Pritzkers and John Scully–who sits on the board of Success Academy.
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South Carolina charter schools go authorizer shopping:
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/thousands-of-students-millions-of-dollars-at-stake-in-brawl/article_85b84fb4-b349-11e7-adea-571b8938a004.html
This is exactly what happened in Ohio- they switch authorizers to avoid being held accountable.
It’s such a shame South Carolina is jamming so many kids into online programs.
In a decade this will be considered a really tragic error, and it was wholly preventable. There was no reason at all to do it- they took so much risk for so little payoff.
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This is what the charter lobby is pushing in California, too. Multiple authorizers are a hallmark of states that have run amok.
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I don’t know. Because she’s dumb, and because she can?
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Well, the good news, in my district at least, is that this crap school is struggling to recruit enough students, meaning those dollars are staying in their little prisons where they can actually be used to educate kids and pay teachers.
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